Martina Miholić

Chicks2fishes was site specific project. In manner of my collaborative work it was conceived in conversation and communication with my friends. Project was targeting problem of violence over female and other potentially endangered groups and possibilities of (self) defense.

Throughout the project I was collecting stories of DIY self – defense objects, methods, techniques and some real life situations. I got various responds and some of them were well known as keys, rings with spikes all up to home made bayonets.

Project, I considerate to be work in process, in its one phase resulted with little fanzine, which gathered all collected methods supported with my own photo interpretation of each, real life experiences and participants personal observations of the problem. Additionally fanzine was supplied with some experts tips. Fanzine was made in a slightly humorist way, not because subject is funny, but to emphasize absurdity of it. At the same time I did not want to make something traumatic more traumatic. Unfortunately problem still seems to be subject of many taboos and not speaking enough about or not speaking loud enough. Through this approach I wanted to make it more accessible and publicly visible.

Event itself and LiberSPACE Hallway-gallery, where it was shown, was reserved for action. Beside Krav Maga center self defense presentation there was space for public, live, fierce discussion.

In the future I would like to shift the view. It's hard and it would be wrong to draw a strict line between genders. But let's say I am interested in the view of those who would harder end up in the position of the victim. I would like to observe their possibly emphatic neutral or aggressive attitude towards victims.

Hallway Gallery LiberSPACE
space to provoke a transient form

Within the historical continuity of Zagreb’s initiatives and actions in non afirmated and urban public spaces, Hallway Gallery LiberSPACE invites artists working in different media to site-specific (re)action, reflection of the space legislation, economy and ecology of an art work, the position of artists and production trends within the contemporary bureaucratic apparatus for production of art and culture.
It encourages interventions which take into account the specificity of the concept of the gallery; follow the logic of maximum performance through minimum (production) input in the material sense.
Hallway-gallery LiberSPACE was initiated as a respond of artist Tonka Malekovic to create an artistic work in a hallway of a Liberdance dance studio in Zagreb. By creating an „artwork“ which is non material, but constantly in the process of transformation (thanks to different artists contributing with their own ephemeral interventios); a relations towards a specificity of a place (dance studio) was made.